LGBT+ History Month: Campbell Johnstone on being the first gay All Black

Campbell Johnstone had seen all the stories.

“There’s always been this pressure about ‘who is the gay All Black?'” the former prop says.

“You know – ‘there’s one out there, but who is it?'”

“And whenever something like that would appear in the media, friends and former team-mates would send me the link with a laughing emoji, and we’d all have a bit of a chuckle.”

Because Johnstone, 43, was that gay All Black and in January he made headlines around the world by speaking publicly about his sexuality for the first time.

It was a watershed moment for the game and a deeply personal one for the New Zealander.

Born into a sports-mad family, Johnstone was introduced to rugby by his two older brothers – who didn’t exactly hold back when it came to the physicality of the game.

“It makes you a little more battle-hardened,” he laughs.

“You might be a couple of steps ahead of the other kids because you’ve had – in a bizarre way – the pleasure of being beaten up by your older siblings!”

It certainly stood him in good stead, as Johnstone moved up through the ranks.

He went to university to make sure he had something to fall back on if rugby didn’t work out, but playing professionally was always the goal.

In 2005 he reached the pinnacle of his sport when he was selected to represent New Zealand.

“The adrenaline rush is incredible,” Johnstone says of his call-up.

“Your coaches know the effort you’ve put in to get there, and then there’s the sacrifices my parents made for me to pursue my dream – taking me to games, driving round, dealing with me when I was the grumpy kid around the house who’d had a bad game… So it was sheer excitement!”

Johnstone was All Black number 1056 and played in three Tests in 2005.

He made 72 appearances for Canterbury and 38 for the Crusaders before retiring in 2012.

On the outside, there was little to separate the prop from any of the men who’d come before him.

But on the inside, Johnstone knew different.

He’d realised he might be gay as a teenager and feared it could be the end of his rugby dreams.

“I was a boy who wanted to be an All Black, that was my goal,” Johnstone says.

“That ideal world was about masculinity – a Kiwi bloke that was strong, had a wife and kids, things like that. So when those feelings were popping into my head, I was quick to push them aside.

“I was scared, that’s the best way to put it. I was scared it could derail the dream I had.

“It was like I was stuck between a rock and a hard place.

“The game gave me so much enjoyment, yet on the flip side, when I’d come home – because I wasn’t being honest – that gave me a lot of anxiety.

“And then I’d go back to rugby and I’d never actually think about it, because I was fully focused on playing the game.”

Johnstone loved rugby…